Rise Magazine

If it was easy to get child care, many families wouldn’t get an ACS case or have to deal with the family policing system, because they wouldn’t have to leave their children at home. If I had access to child care, I never would have become involved with the family policing system. ACS became involved with my family when I left my younger kids with my 14-year-old child watching them when I went out for an appointment.

Halimah Washington, Rise Community Coordinator, discusses the connection between child care and family policing, how child care supports family safety and wellbeing and why Rise identified access to child care as a policy priority. 

In 2021, in collaboration with TakeRoot Justice, Rise released the participatory action research report, An Unavoidable System: The Harms of Family Policing and Parents’ Vision for Investing in Community Care. Following our report release, Rise held a series of eight community report back sessions, engaging parents, parent advocates, social workers, legal providers, and community members in discussions about our research findings. Through this process, Rise identified three policy priorities for 2022-2023.  

Rise is working towards the abolition of the family policing system. Here, we outline recommendations based on our experiences, research and community report back sessions that can serve as immediate concrete stepping stones to move New York City toward shrinking the family policing system and strengthening networks of community care that truly support families.

Keyna Franklin recently launched a staff book club at Rise. Here, she describes why she started the book club, how our learning together can support our work at Rise, and what we are reading.

At the start of 2022, legislation went into effect that changes how New York State’s Statewide Central Registry (SCR) operates. The legislation was developed and pushed forward by parent activists and allies to reduce the harm and scope of the SCR, which particularly impacts Black and Latinx families and communities.

Here, Chris Gottlieb, Co-Director of NYU Law School’s Family Defense Clinic, details what has changed, how the legislation will be implemented, parents’ rights related to the SCR and how to prepare for a fair hearing. NYU Law School’s Family Defense Clinic partners with parent activists and legal defense organizations on legislative advocacy to push the family defense movement forward.